Founder and CEO, Immunomic Therapeutics, Inc.
Dr. William Hearl is the founder of Immunomic Therapeutics, Inc. and is an experienced and successful life science businessman and entrepreneur. Dr. Hearl is adept at brokering mutually beneficial partnerships and identifying non-traditional collaborations and investment opportunities. Recently, Dr. Hearl led ITI into a significant licensing agreement with Astellas Pharma Inc., to explore the use of LAMP-vax, a next-generation immunotherapy platform, for use to prevent and treat allergic diseases. ITI believes that LAMP-based nucleic acid immunotherapy may have the potential to broaden the current use of cancer immunotherapy. In fact, preclinical data is currently being developed to explore how LAMP nucleic acid constructs could both amplify and activate the immune response in highly immunogenic tumor types and also be used to create robust immune responses to tumor types that otherwise do not provoke an immune response.
The advent of LAMP technology came from Dr. Hearl’s work with Dr. Tom August of Capital Genomix, Inc. and Johns Hopkins University. From that collaboration, ITI began operations in 2006. Dr. Hearl’s extensive experience in intellectual property management and business development led to the rewarding sub-license of the LAMP technology to Geron Corporation within 30 days of initiating operations and subsequent license agreements, valued at over $300 million, in 2015 with Japan-based Astellas for next generation allergy vaccines based on the LAMP platform.
Dr. Hearl is also the founder of Capital Genomix, Inc. (CGI), a Maryland-based biomarker and drug discovery Company and served as its first chief executive officer from inception in 2000 to late 2002 when he assumed the role of chief scientific officer. Dr. Hearl raised seed funds and series A & B funding for CGI (approximately $5 million in cash/debt). He also acquired the Dynex Technologies division of Thermo Scientific in a leveraged acquisition deal. Dynex was subsequently divested and yielded a remarkable tenfold return to the Company.
Dr. Hearl is also responsible for the acquisition and development of the core technologies of Capital Genomix: GeneSystem320™ was licensed exclusively from MD Anderson Cancer Center and the ImmunoMouse™ was invented by Dr. Hearl. Dr. Hearl also has an established record of scientific productivity over his 20 years of work in the biotech industry. He started his career as a bench scientist at Electro-Nucleonics, Inc. and developed blood based diagnostics for HIV, HTLV-I and Hepatitis C. He later worked at Life Technologies Incorporated and directed the immunodetection group. Under Dr. Hearl’s direction, the lab developed a number of innovative antibody-based detection kits and reagents. He moved into scientific management when he became the director of research and development at Kirkegaard & Perry Laboratories, Inc. in 1994.
Dr. Hearl earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Tennessee and B.S. from East Tennessee State University.